1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to methods of business transactions involving client interfaces interacting with servers.
2. Background Information
The paradigm of today's business transaction systems is based upon two “computers”, known as the client computer and the server for convenience. There are two common transaction processor architectures using these two “computers”.
A server-heavy architecture forces the server to act every time a client cues the client computer with something that the server will eventually need. Pre-server programming, such as data validation, can be done on the client computer. However, the server is called with every client action that the server needs to know about.
The server-heavy architecture has a number of problems. There is a waste of bandwidth at the server, because every client interaction that changes information at the client is sent to the server. Server-heavy architectures are typically slow. The client takes an action, then the server takes over. The server is in control, not the client, because the client must wait until the server is ready to proceed, even to select another option on the same web page. At its worst, the client sees nothing happening, for a long time, before the client is allowed to proceed to another transaction.
A client-heavy architecture stores everything until the client computer must talk to the server. This storage requires permission from the client to store information on the client computer. Typically this architecture is much faster, but it has problems with client acceptance. Many organizations and users will not allow their client computers store information this way, due to possibly creating a security hole.
Many merchants do not want client-heavy architectures, because they lose the interim information on the server, which can provide insights into the buying patterns of their customers.